Sector Brighton

Sector Brighton was a sector of the Champagne theater of the Western Front of World War I which saw heavy fighting between US-led Entente forces and the Germans in the spring of 1918.

In a rare instance of spring 1918 sector fighting consisting of predominantly-US troops and no French forces on the Entente side, the Entente force - consisting of two British Army battalions (1st Battalion, King's Regiment and 2nd Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers), three US Marine Corps companies (two of the 5th Marine Regiment and one of the 6th Marine Regiment), two US Army regiments (the 234th and 330th), and the Belgian Army's 9th Regiment attacked three German regiments (two reserve regiments and the German 236th Infantry Regiment) and five battalions (Sturm-Battalion No. 5, Sturm-Battalion No. 6, a Hesse-Kassel pionier battalion, a Lower Silesian pionier battalion, and a Lotharingian pionier battalion) across the chalky and muddy fields of Champagne in a night attack. The fighting was close-quarters and lit only by moonlight, leading to heavy losses on both sides in a brutal battle for the first row of German trenches. The first trenches fell relatively quickly, but German resistance intensified as the Entente forces attacked their Deep Trenches. The Entente forces secured this second row of trenches and then attacked the German headquarter trenches, their last defenses. After much close-quarters combat and occasional long-range firefights down trench corridors, the Allies secured the German headquarters trench, ending the battle in a decisive Entente victory.